Water management requires intensive cooperation across sectors and disciplines. Yet, bringing oneself to thinking beyond the individual silo is a hard and continuous process. Especially as the natural and economic environments become more and more unpredictable.

BLUE PLANET Berlin Water Dialogues is the leading platform in Germany to bridge the gap between research and practice, across sectors. This year it partners with the EU-funded Horizon 2020 project AquaNES. The project demonstrated the feasibility and effectiveness of combined natural and engineered systems for water treatment systems (cNES).

During the BLUE PLANET Berlin Water Dialogues conference, AquaNES presents the innovations that emerged from the collaboration of utilities, industry and academia.

The event offers various interactive formats

• to learn how cNES can help utilities to adapt to challenges driven by climate change, legal developments and public attitudes
• to interact with operators of cNES (in a Gallery Tour)
• to get insight into the wider benefits of cNES and
• to discuss about their potential for wider application

Panel discussions with representatives from water utilities and the private sector allow for a multi-faceted exchange on water management challenges, including those that cristallized from past BLUE PLANET Berlin Water Dialogues.

We invite technology providers, utilities, relevant authorities and others players in the water sector to join

Programme and registration.

Prof. Dr. Thomas Grischek, AquaNES work package leader, and Prof. Dr. Chittaranjan Ray have recently edited a special issue of the journal Water. It is fully dedicated to the efficiency of bank filtration and post-treatment. All AquaNES partners working in this area have contributed to it. Find the open access publications here.

Robin Wünsch (FHNW) won the  Best Presentation Award at  the "Ozone and Advanced Oxidation – Solutions for Emergigng Pollutions of Concern to the Water and the Environment" conference held from 5. - 7. September 2018 in Lausanne.

Talking about  "UV/H₂O₂ before biological treatment in drinking water – effects on the removal of micropollutants and biodegradability" he shared results from almost two years  of experiments in the Lange Erlen drinking water production site.

Dr. Sylvie Baig (Head of Scientific Innovation Suez, Stategic Development Department) and Prof. Michel Roustan (Vice-President of IOA EA₃G-group) congratulated on behalf of the scientific committee of the conference.

Site visit to Rheinbach demonstration site of Erftverband. Partners of Vertech Group and the project manager went there to see the long-time running pilot plant and the progress in the construction of the full-scale retention soil filter. In the AquaNES project the system will be investigated by Life Cycle Assessment to evidence its low environmental impacts in removing micro-pollutants from WWTP effluents and CSO spills. Watch the video to learn more about the concept

The full consortium met in Budapest for its month 24 meeting, after two years of intensive work in the demonstration sites. Next to the technical progress, partners discussed ways towards a multi-criteria assessment of the interventions.

For a technical visit, Budapest Waterworks took the group out to one of their historic water reservoirs and the reverse osmosis pilot plant.

The AquaNES project team and Budapest Waterworks organised a regional stakeholder workshop on riverbank filtration on 30 May 2018. The event attracted more than 50 practioners and researchers

Participants gained insight into RBF hydraulics, water quality issues, treatment and post-treatment. Utilities reported about the rehabilitation of abstraction wells, the effect of river flow variations on operation and the challenges of planning new schemes.

The AquaNES project team exemplified the potential of various post-treatment options in coping with these issues. This also included the appeal to consider risk assessment and risk management approaches. This helps ensuring the safe operation of bankfiltration sites under a broad range of hydraulic boundary conditions.

The appointed External Expert and AquaNES work package leaders met in Basel to review the progress of the first 18 months. Part of the group also took the opportunity to visit the Lange Erlen demonstration site.

At the World’s Leading Trade Fair for Water, Sewage, Waste and Raw Material Management AquaNES exhibited at the shared booth experience.science.future B4.138/238.

IFAT experience.science.future. brings together synergies in politics, research and industry.

Project result are also presented in the framework programme in Hall B4 on Tuesday 15 May (13.30-14.00)

More info at www.ifat.de

KWB hosted a 2-day working meeting in Berlin on 18-19 October 2017. The experts exchanged about the progress in the demonstration sites of work package 3

A visit to the pilot installation at Schönerlinde WWTP illustrated the combination of effluent ozonation with subsequent treatment in constructed wetland. The combination of these processes is to improve the removal of organic micropollutants and transformation products. Technology for the pilot is provided by partners Xylem and Akut. The local water utility BWB is operating the plant with scientific support of KWB - Berlin Centre of Competence for Water.

Following WATEC Israel 2017 exhibition and conference in Tel Aviv mid of September project partners visited the site. Team members of Xylem inspected the refurbishment of the ozonator and discussed first results of the newly installed on-line probes and effectiveness of the recirculation.

The site was also show-cased to visitor groups from WATEC.

In the last month also the 1st big sampling campaign for micropollutants and microbial parameters, including viruse, was conducted.

During the Water Innovation Week in Porto from 25-29 September AquaNES will be represented in multiple ways by various consortium partners:

• Side event AG MAR Solutions, 26.09.17, 14 h: project overview and demo-sites studies presentation
• Exemplified solution presentation in the conference session “Innovations for implementing EU water legislation” , 27.09.17 at 14:15 h
• Representation on the H2020 projects booth in the exhibition
• Participation in “Boosting Research & Innovation in the Water Sector: The Impact of EU-funded actions” side event on 29.09.17

Consult the programme for more details on the event website.

The 10^th and 11^th of July 2017, the BACTcontrol system from MicroLAN company has been installed to measure E. coli and total coliforms in the treated wastewater channel of Agon-Coutainville WWTP.

The BACTcontrol detects bacteria based on their specific enzymatic activity. The reaction they catalyse releases a fluorescence dye that can be quantified photometrically. In Agon-Coutainville this measurement will survey the variations in the water quality to eventually better assess the performance of the subsequent reed bed filtration and the impact on the groundwater.

Just a week later another device was commissioned in the Lange Erlen site. It online-monitors the total bacterial activity in the inflow to the advanced oxidation stage. Measurement of samples taken manually in the downstream processes can help assessing microbial bio-degradation in the soil systems.

Riki Gafri, Wadis CEO, presented Wadis Water disinfection innovative technology to India Prime Minister Modi and Israel Prime Minister Netanyahu at the Innovation exhibition (Tel-Aviv, 6 July 2017) .

Wadis was chosen by the Israeli Innovation Authority (IIA) as one of the six innovative companies to present its technology to the two prime ministers.

Wadis, develops and manufactures water and wastewater treatment systems by a unique patented high voltage electrical pulse discharge disinfection technology which is eco-friendly, chemical-free, and is not sensitive to turbidity.

Within AquaNES Wadis is testing its electrical pulse technology as oxidation process in the Shafdan demo-site. They will investigate its performance compared to established advanced oxidation processes as pre-treatment before soil infiltration. This may eventually allow them to develop new markets in the field of high quality water reuse application.

Learn more about the technology concept here.

AquaNES partner Adam-Mickiewicz-University (AMU) hosted a two-day meeting on 22-23 June 2017 in Poznan (PL). Work package 1 partners discussed the results of the testing activities in their bank filtration demonstration sites. The group also spent a day in the field visiting the Debina and Mosina water production area and the water treatment works. Water abstracted from more than 300 wells is treated to drinking water quality. Also experts from social science and ecologists joined, to analyse on the spot the eco-system services provided by the system.

AquaNES is one of very few H2020 project co-ordinated by a Swiss institution. This is why the Euresearch gave the project the floor in there series of Success Stories. Euresearch is the Swiss network mandated by the State Secretariat for Education, Research and Innovation providing targeted information, hands-on advice and transnational partnering related to European research and innovation programmes. The Success Story has been published on their website and promoted via social media, including a video on YouTube.

The AquaNES month 12 meeting was held from 17-19 May 2017 at Santorini, in close neighborhood to two of the AquaNES demonstration sites. Next to update on the general project progress a particular focus was on the sites at Antiparos and Thirasia.

The wastewater of up to 2,000 inhabitants is treated in constructed wetland (CW) based processes. One combines CW with post-disinfection and is subsequently used for irrigation purposes. The other will apply photocatalytic pre-treatment before the CW followed by membrane filtration. During the AquaNES project meeting, the options for further plant optimisation were discussed with the Greek project partners and the local plant operators.

Several AquaNES partners (BWB, KWB, Akut and Xylem) were involved in the exhibition and scientific programme of Wasser Berlin. Daniel Sauter of partner BWB shared insights into two demonstration sites they are operating in the project:

• Combination of a novel nanofiltration with bank filtrate in drinking water production (site no. 1)
• Combination of ozonation and constructed wetlands to treat wastewater to bathing water quality and remove micro-pollutants (site no. 12)

Also the project coordinator Thomas Wintgens highlighted the project efforts to contribute to technological innovations in water reuse during his talk about “Municipal Waste Water Reuse in EU:Trends, markets, guidelines, engineered and natural solutions” at the  Ozone Symposium on 29 March.

Both units are intended for long term field test operation and are designed to combine riverbank filtration (RBF) and inline-electrolytic chlorine production (ECl₂). Their main target is to offer a more reliable and robust alternative for disinfection of water for drinking to existing conventional practices, especially for small scale and rural applications. This approach is supported by the fact that the units can be driven completely on solar energy and do not require any chemicals for operation.

The installation at both sites was conducted by AUTARCON staff together with the Indian partner Uttarakhand Jal Sansthan (UJS -  Uttarakhand State Water Supply Organisation) and German partner Dresden University of Applied Sciences (HTWD) with support from the Indian Institute of Technology Roorkee. Installation was finalized by the end of September and start-up operation could be initiated.